Drake Maye Wins Sunday and History Says He’s Canton-Bound

Four quarterbacks have won a Super Bowl in their second NFL season. Four. Every single one is either in the Pro Football Hall of Fame or waiting for his bust to dry. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a pattern so clean it barely needs an argument.

Drake Maye starts Super Bowl LX on Sunday against Seattle. If he wins, he becomes the fifth member of a club that doesn’t have a single non-Hall of Famer in it. And he’d be the youngest starting quarterback to ever win a Super Bowl. At 23 years and 162 days old, Maye would shatter Ben Roethlisberger’s record of 23 years and 340 days. That alone gets your attention. But the history behind it should keep it.

The 4-for-4 Club Doesn’t Have a Weak Link

Kurt Warner won Super Bowl XXXIV after the 1999 season. He went from stocking grocery shelves to Canton. Tom Brady won XXXVI after the 2001 season. Sixth-round pick, replaced Drew Bledsoe, never looked back. Roethlisberger won XL after the 2005 season. He becomes eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2027 and he’s considered a virtual lock. Russell Wilson won XLVIII after the 2013 season, and even though his career cratered in Denver and bottomed out with the Giants this year, he still has 10 Pro Bowls, a Super Bowl ring, and nearly 47,000 career passing yards.

Wilson is the weakest case of the four and he still has a legitimate argument. Warner is already in. Brady will be first ballot whenever he’s eligible. Roethlisberger has two rings, 64,000 career passing yards, and 18 seasons with one franchise. The floor for this group is a borderline Hall of Famer. The ceiling is the greatest quarterback who ever lived.

Brady is the obvious comparison for Maye and not just because they wore the same uniform. Brady sat on the bench his entire rookie year in 2000, fourth on the depth chart, completing exactly one pass all season. Then Bledsoe went down in Week 2 of 2001 and Brady never gave the job back. The Patriots’ all-time quarterback rankings have Brady at the top for obvious reasons. But Maye’s second year is already statistically superior to Brady’s. Maye threw for 4,394 yards with a 113.5 passer rating and a 72% completion rate. Brady threw for 2,843 yards with an 86.5 rating in his championship season. Different eras, sure. Different supporting casts. But Brady needed a defense that carried him through three playoff games to get that first ring. Maye led the NFL in passer rating and completion percentage. He didn’t need to be carried anywhere.

The Losers Tell the Real Story

Now flip it. Four second-year quarterbacks have lost the Super Bowl. Dan Marino lost XIX to the 49ers. Colin Kaepernick lost XLVII to the Ravens. Joe Burrow lost LVI to the Rams. Brock Purdy lost LVIII to the Chiefs.

Marino made the Hall of Fame, but it took 20 years from that Super Bowl loss to get his gold jacket, and one of the most prolific passing careers in history to get there without a ring. Kaepernick flamed out. Burrow and Purdy are still writing their stories, but neither has been back to the big game since. The win matters. It matters enormously. Marino is the only loser from this group who made Canton, and he’s also the greatest quarterback to never win a championship. That’s not a path you want to replicate.

Win it in your second year and you’re Canton-bound. Lose it and you need a 17-year career to even have a shot. That’s the split. It’s that clean.

This Feels Like 2001 All Over Again

The parallels between Maye and Brady aren’t lazy. They’re structural. Both inherited a franchise that had been going nowhere. Both played under coaches installing a new culture. Brady had Bill Belichick, who went 5-11 his first year in New England before everything clicked in year two. Maye has Mike Vrabel, who learned everything he knows about winning in Foxborough. The Patriots went from 4-13 to 14-3 this season. That 10-win improvement ties an NFL record. Brady’s first championship team improved by six wins over the previous year. Maye nearly doubled that.

And the playoff path looks familiar too. Maye beat the Chargers, Texans, and Broncos to get here, facing a top-five defense in every single round. The kid is 3-0 in the playoffs and hasn’t lost a postseason game in his career. Brady was 3-0 in his first postseason run too. Run the Super Bowl simulator and you’ll see the Seahawks are favored. Seattle has the league’s best defense. Sam Darnold has been the NFL’s best redemption story. New England is a five-point underdog. Good. Brady was a 14-point underdog against the Rams in his first Super Bowl. Nobody cares about the spread once you’re holding the Lombardi.

Seven Rings Would Change Everything

If Maye wins on Sunday, New England gets its seventh Super Bowl title. Seven. That would break the tie with Pittsburgh for the most championships in NFL history. Each one of the first six came with Brady. The seventh would belong to a 23-year-old kid from North Carolina who lost the MVP to Matthew Stafford by a single first-place vote.

Canton doesn’t call after one game. Maye knows that. He’d still need a decade of elite play, more playoff runs, more moments that stick in people’s memories. But the history is screaming at us. No second-year Super Bowl winner has ever been denied a gold jacket. Not one. Maye wins Sunday and the clock starts ticking toward Canton. Lose, and he joins Marino’s side of the ledger. The side that needs 15 more years of proof.

The game kicks off at 6:30 PM EST on Sunday. Check the daily QB rankings to see where Maye stands heading into the biggest game of his life.

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